Pete Tong's outlaw origins

Radio 1 superstar DJ Pete Tong chatted to Skrufff this week about his upcoming retrospective ‘Essential Classics’ compilation and reminisced about attending illegal warehouse parties in the 80s, many of which had been raided by the police.

“Oh yes, there were too many to mention,” Pete recalled, “I was never arrested at any of them though; the closest I came was being chased down the road once, outside a pirate (radio) station.”

Coincidentally, his experiences matched those of free party pioneer Chris Liberator who told Skrufff last year he’d never been busted at a UK party either, though had experienced numerous similarly close encounters with Britain’s party police.

“Once in the early 90s the police steamed in unannounced at a party in Brixton and we literally grabbed our decks and ran,” said Chris, “I remember someone saying to me a couple of days later ‘I saw you running down Brixton High Street with a record deck under your arm’,” he laughed.

Pete’s new compilation (his first ever retrospective) is split across three CDs labelled Terrace, Superclubbing, and Warehouse, though the track selection appears to have little connection to each term (‘Ask the marketing department!’ said Pete, when asked about the logic.)  He also refused to rank any of the tracks which include Scissor Sisters’ Comfortably Numb, Stardust, Run DMC’s It’s Like that and Hardfloor’s Acperience, telling Skrufff ‘I can’t put them in order – they are all great.”

Pete Tong’s Essential Classics is out now on Mercury Records.

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